Costco recently arrived in my little white-bread town, and all the locals sem to have a love for this place bordering on religious awe.
I haven’t been in a Costco since I was a kid. From what I can tell, the people who I talk to (the ones who love Costco) can’t do basic math. One friend was telling me that they got a wonderful deal on paper towels, a 12 pack for $14. I get paper towels at Wally World, 8 for $5.9-something. Someone else was saying how cheap Tide is, but a local retailer sells the 100 load bottle of liquid Tide for $10. That’s hard to beat. My in-laws buy Kirkland Signature produce and meat; most of it looks and smells like roadkill.
So, even if I don’t consider the $50 yearly membership, is Costco really worth it? I know you can buy huge quantities of stuff, but if the customer is paying a higher per-unit cost, what on earth is the point? I have no desire to buy 185 rolls of TP at once, but if the price was right I would do so. From what people tell me, that is not the case.
So is it worth shopping at Costco, and if so, why?
I joined once for a year, and came to the conclusion that it was NOT worth it. As you pointed out with paper towels, I’ve noticed that all everyday time items (toilet paper, soda, bottled water) seem to be cheaper at local supermarket. It is a fun experience to go there because they’re so huge, and they have all the free food, but economically I think it’s a bad deal.
Not worth it for me. I spent way more money than I ever did before and ended up wasting quite a bit. Now if you have a big family, yes you can get good deals. As a single person, I just tag along now and then and check out what they have. Go on your lunch break and make a lunch out of the free samples.
Oh and it’s a great place to buy big ticket items. They have probably the best return policy of any major store.
I switched from Costco to BJs recently, but same thing, really.
It is worth it for me, because I go through Trident gum really fast. I use up an 18-piece pack in 3 days. Packs are $1.29 at regular stores, occasionally on sale for $0.99. At Costco/BJs I can get a 12-count box of 18-piece gum packs for $8. Every now and again there is a coupon for a couple dollars off. If I only ever bought Trident I would save $40 a year over the sale price and $77 over full price.
Of course, it is very true that if you don’t know what things normally cost elsewhere, it is easy to buy something that seems like a good deal but isn’t.
ETA - the gum savings don’t quite make up the membership cost, but judicious other purchases do make it worthwhile. E.g. the regular bread I buy is $3.59 a loaf at the regular market but $3.89 for two loaves at BJs.
We have an active Costco membership and don’t plan to renew. Used to have a BJs membership, but the store nearest us shut down and refunded our annual fee.
I find the food to be of pretty good quality (e.g., steaks), and some bulk items offer a cost benefit, but not really enough to make it worthwhile. Plus it’s always a complete mob scene.
Way worth it for us. We love Kirkland brand just-about-anything, and the meat at our store is superb. We stock up and freeze several times a year. They are also good for larger purchases of things like razor cartridges, shave gel and the like. I’d like them even more if they were close enough to home that I could gas up there regularly.
The problem with buying large packages of stuff is, you tend to use more of the stuff when you use it. There are studies showing this is true of many different products. In some cases, like paper towels, that’s just slightly wasteful. In the case of food, though, it can have a negative impact on your health. I don’t buy the big packages of ravioli from Costco any more, because we tended to eat too much at a sitting when we did.
Lots of free food isn’t necessarily so good for your health, either, if, like most Americans, you’re overweight. Overweight people do not need to be encouraged to eat more food, free or otherwise. I avoid free food samples in stores for this reason.
I go through a lot of chicken and the price is pretty good (about $2.69/lb) and I like the way it’s packaged (one full breast in a separately sealed container). The large box of spinach at $3.99 is also much cheaper than the $5 bag at the grocery store which has half the amount.
COSTCO member for two years checking in here. We find that the membership in general is worth it, but not all of the items sold there are.
In particular, if you can get an identical food item in your local supermarket or electronic item at Best Buy, it’s generally going to be about the same price as it is at COSTCO. After all, they’re all large firms with essentually equal amounts of purchasing power. It’s generally the stuff that you can purchase in larger quantities at COSTCO than you can elsewhere where you get your savings.
Having said that, one thing that we’ve found** not** to be worth the extra cost (at least for our family-of-two - the kids are grown and gone) is COSTCO’s Executive membership option. For the past two years we’ve been executive members, and for that extra $50/year our 2% discount has amounted to $45 and $36 respectively. When we renew this year it’s going to be under the dull-normal plan.
If you are tending to a big family, or a Battalion, I think maybe it would be worth it. Otherwise nowadays there are many other options to get the same products at cheap prices without having to pay that yearly cover charge.
No doubt this is part of their strategy: you pay an annual membership fee, so you feel compelled to shop there (almost) exclusively, so eventually you lose track of what similar items cost from other stores.
Wife and I have been a member for one year, expiring at the end of this month - and we are going to let it expire. Despite the membership fee, we don’t shop there a whole lot, in part because the closest one is 18 miles away, and also because no, their prices aren’t all that amazing. One some items here and there, yes, if you’re careful you can score great deals. But overall? Not so much. On the whole, I’d say they’re not much more expensive or cheaper than most other stores.
We just got a membership, actually. We are having a baby in November and I have a 2 page long list of things that I want to have a 6-8 week supply of in the house before the sproglet arrives. Amazonmom.com will deliver diapers and wipes so that I’m not tons of worried about but I absolutely refuse to bundle up the baby against a New York winter to make a trip to the corner store to buy garbage bags or something if I can help it. To me it is worth the $50 annual fee for a year to be able to have a stockpile of toilet paper, paper towels, garbage bags, dish soap, etc. on hand to prevent me from having to try to be functional in public on minimal sleep.
My family buys a great deal at Costco. We buy a week’s worth of fruits and vegetables, they’re often significantly cheaper than the grocery store, and not in such a large unit size that you can’t eat it all. We also buy bread, crackers, cheese, frozen foods, canned goods, dry goods and cleaning supplies there. Now, you’re not always going to beat the best deal you can get at the grocery store, but the grocery store doesn’t have those deals every week.
You do have to pick your fresh goods carefully, and commit to eating what you’re buying, so you don’t throw all your savings down the disposal.
I don’t know that I’d be as keen on Costco if I had a really good local supermarket. My local markets are either pretty lousy (Pathmark) or very pricey (Whole Foods)
I think it’s worth it if you shop carefully and know what prices are good and what aren’t. Also, you need to have the discipline not to buy stuff you wouldn’t normally buy.
Some stuff you can really tell the immediate value of. We were pretty happy to discover that they sell $100 gift cards to our favorite local restaurant for $75. We absolutely would be spending that money at that restaurant whether we had bought the discounted cards or not.
It’s worth it if you pay attention, Costco doesn’t always have the best deal. We split an Executive membership with my grandfolks and the rewards check usually covers the membership fee. We only go on coupon days, also, we stockpile when it comes to non-perishables.
A few years ago you could only get Stretch Tite in a green box with the weird slider instead of the metal edge we all knew and loved. It was amazing how much this pissed people off, it came up in small talk quite a bit.
We were spared the entire ordeal because our 2-pack of Stretch Tite only ran out a few days ago. I swear I’m going to date the next boxes because that was an epic run.
We had a membership for a year then dropped it. If you compare their bulk buy items to single items sold at full retail in regular stores sure there is a savings. But regular stores often sell in bulk at times and run sales often enough that there isn’t much difference.
Target almost always has some type of papertowel or toiletpaper jumbo-pack on sale on an endcap.
If you’re not close enough to one with a gas station to use it as your exclusive source of fuel, I can see it not being worth it. I’m fortunate enough to work near enough to one that does that I can, so it’s definitely worth it for me.
either you are showing some bias or your Costco has a problem, the meat department at Costco is easily the best in the area outside of a few high end butchers. they are reliably fantastic.
if you only shop at Costco like it is a standard issue grocery store then its not worth your time. if however you shop like its a Costco I dont know how its “Not” worth your time.
I smoke up a couple of their tri tip roasts to rare then seal them up with a vacuum sealer and freeze in sandwich sized packs with a strip of smoked bacon in each. for about 30$ I can get 10 or so stupidly good meals out of that.
same deal with a lot of their stuff, a 5 pound bag of fingerling potatoes is around 5$ at Costco, at the grocery store for about the same thing would probably run me 15$ if not more. make up a batch of roasted veggies (after a stop at the regular grocery store for things I dont need large amounts of) and again make into individual servings and freeze.
It works really well for us. We buy all of our whole milk for the baby and the boy there, plus, a LOT of fruit (which they manage to finish), eggs, cheese, meat, raw nuts, oats and diapers for the little one. They also used to have awesome deals on formula when my son was a baby (my daughter wouldn’t do formula, which was awesome because her food was free for eight months).
All in all, definitely worth it. It’d probably be moreso if my family ate snacky stuff, but I have a rule against that (though I do allow the occasional trail mix). It just seems like a bad idea to buy snacks in those quantities.
I also use it for the office occasionally for events.